Research Report on the CORPORATE E-Learning Industry
China Distance Education (Information) April 2005
By the Market Research Office of China Distance Education
Development Tendency of E-Learning in Chinese Enterprises
China Distance Education (Information) Feb 4, 2003
by Zhang Jingbin, Yu Shengwen
At present, a new enterprise training mode—E-Learning has been gradually recognized by Chinese enterprises, and the timing for a faster E-Learning implementation is right.
As the progress of economic globalization and China’s entry into WTO, the Chinese enterprises will have to face all in-depth innovations and reforms, and ponder the training in aspects of significance, strategy, function, system, implementation content and measures. At present, the new enterprise training mode—E-Learning has been gradually accepted by Chinese companies. Large enterprises such as the Bright Dairy, Bank of China, Ping An Insurance, Nokia China, Eastern Communication and Galaxy Securities have already taken the lead in carrying out corporate E-Learning. The time for Chinese enterprises to speed up the implementation of E-Learning has come.
What is the status quo of E-Learning in Chinese enterprises?
Ⅰ. Status Observation of Enterprise Networked Training
The training department usually does not take the core place in Chinese enterprises’ decision-making processes. The early organized enterprise training, including the training ideas, systems and modes, are introduced from abroad. We are going to show the whole picture of current status from perspectives of market, platform, enterprise networked curriculum and standardization.
1. Nascent Market
In the U.S., the birthplace of E-Learning, the population of E-learners is growing at 300% on a yearly basis; about 60% enterprises adopted Internet in employee training. According to IDC statistics, the portion of E-Learning is skyrocketing at 83% yearly will be account for 40% of total enterprise training volume, which brings traditional classroom lecture from 80% down to 60%. The global market of E-Learning was 6.3 billion USD in 2001, 11.5 billion in 2003, and this number will reach 23 billion in 2004. What’s more, according to prediction of American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), 90% of the 500-plus-employee companies will adopt E-Learning by 2010.
In China, this market is still in nascence. According to the Development Status Report of Chinese Enterprise Networked Training on China Distance Education (the Information Edition), Issue December 2002, 97% out of the 69 companies had carried out enterprise training, while only 29% of them adopted the network. In general, the traditional training still played the main role in enterprise training market, and the room for E-Learning service is huge. In addition, CCID Medium is quoted as saying that Chinese enterprises spent as much as RMB 10 billion Yuan in employee training in 2001, and budget for E-Learning-based distance training accounted for 0.1% of the entire investment. It is estimated this portion will be increased to 30% in 2005. HR managers have gradually realized the advantages of E-Learning: it is cost-effective, and facilitates the fast publicizing and update of enterprise knowledge on network. In the tangible future, the corporate E-Learning will be playing a more important role in the training domain.
In the domain of enterprise education, the China Economic and Trade Committee is currently taking a lead in instructing enterprise’s managerial training and boosting the training from policies and strategies like: continue to sponsor industry, commerce and supplementary knowledge training aiming at top managerial staff; self-organized training within enterprises; actively explore new paths to international cooperative training; actively introduce and boost ISO10015 certification training; and encourage the enterprises to adopt the E-Learning method.
2. Characteristic Mainstream Platforms
Although the domestic E-Learning started later, there are a dozen of mainstream enterprise grade E-Learning platforms (excluding those used in networked schools and teaching platforms in generic education domain). The research and development modes are divided into two major modes:
The first mode refers to the proprietary IPR products of domestic companies. These products, including Xiao Ji Tong, Network Ladder, Beida Online, An Bo, Oz-Time, Turbolinux, Cyberwisdom usually serving Chinese enterprises’ management and operation mode, can be customized. Their functionalities basically cover networked curriculum development, training resource management, learning/teaching process, teaching affair management, exam/feedback, on-line learning/off-line tracking, etc., which are mainly based on the J2EE architecture. For instance, the Xiao Ji Tong enterprise grade E-Learning module includes such functions as organizational structure, teaching affairs, learning/teaching, exam, training classes, spreadsheet and system; and the interactive teaching consists of discussion group, individual column, electronic white board, pointer, virtual classroom, news group, seminar room, mail list, community/service center, instant messaging, peer supervision, progress report, etc. which are applied to distributed organizational structure management, multilevel authorization and multiple user roles. A curriculum packet structure embodying modern teaching design ideas is put forward to meet enterprise need in building multilevel and dimensional curriculum system structure. A number of technical measures are provided to control the network flow in prevention of traffic jam, which is useful in the deployment of complicated large enterprise networks. They provide various learning strategies such as networked training, face-to-face lecture, on-line/off-line learning, self-controlled learning, collaborative learning, which can satisfy different needs of employees with varied education background. Moreover, these systems support data exchange with enterprise HR system, performance evaluation and finance systems, basically meeting the need of large distributed enterprises’ training demand.
The second mode refers to the products integrated by the foreign companies’ core technologies. This mode applies to the following two situations: first, the foreign companies establish independent facilities within China; second, the joint venture products with software technologic core of foreign products. The second situation accounts for about 30% of the platform market. They are: Motorola China curriculum, IBM LearningSpace and KnowledgeProducer, Oracle iLearning, Sun LearnTone, Samsung SDS eduPort, IntraLearn IntraLearn, etc. These products usually do not support customization and second development, barely localized, and their logic flow and functional frameworks do not fully cover the training needs of Chinese enterprises. The interactive measures facilitating learners’ idea building and collaborative learning are few. A large percentage of these products are compliant with industry standards. For instance, the LearningSpace5.0 released by IBM in last November provides several interactive measures including real-time visual classroom, discussion group, e-mail, chat room, progress reporting, and functions of material (resource management and organization), planner (curriculum), profile (privileges and parameter management), user, registration, reporter (spreadsheet). There’s still room to improve in such modules as curriculum’s branches, training resource scheduling (classroom, face-to-face lecture class, books, audio/video materials), curriculum distribution system, library-based intellectual Q/A, analysis and in-depth utilization of training data. They have obvious advantages in industry standards, reporting, video interaction and curriculum making.
3. The above two types of E-Learning platforms have the following characteristics:
Both types have advantages and disadvantages. The domestic products with IPR usually provide customized development, and the foreign products, restricted by the cultural customs and sales strategies, are barely localized. Most foreign platforms are limited in the level of agents and clients, and usually not applied for customization and second development. Normally, their sales and service prices are comparatively higher.
In terms of functionalities, products of both modes can normally cover the training resource management and scheduling, curriculum management and distribution, learning and teaching support, teaching assessment and analysis, teaching affairs and system management, and can basically satisfy the training demand of present enterprises.
Currently, the sales pushes of platform products are all aiming at the large and super-large sized enterprises, due to their large employee drain and booming training demand. These enterprises basically have comparatively mature network infrastructure, and they pay more attention to the employee training, which is supported by the fixed annual budget.